


Stealing Fire

by StopTalkingAtMe



Category: The Final Girls (2015)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Mild Sexual Content, Post-Canon, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-23
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-25 18:29:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17126522
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StopTalkingAtMe/pseuds/StopTalkingAtMe
Summary: It's Camp Bloodbath VIII: Back to Camp, and repeatedly dying in various unpleasant and painful ways is starting to lose some of its appeal.





	Stealing Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [metaphasia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphasia/gifts).



**Stealing Fire**

 

Reality was stretched thin at the edge of the world. The sunset had been bleached to sepia, streaked with wisps of grey cloud. They weren’t supposed to have come this far. Max had the feeling that all she needed to do was take the machete and cut a gash right through whatever barrier it was keeping this world and the next from colliding. And maybe the real world might be waiting for them on the other side.

It wouldn’t work though. She’d already tried that.

It was just the three of them now, Max, Vicki and Duncan, waiting to find out which of them would die next. How this movie was going to end. Even Duncan didn’t know. The second time around, during Billy’s murderous rampage through the hospital, they’d tried to stay out of the way and let events take their course without interfering. Watching from a distance, impartial observers...

It hadn’t worked.

They were safe for the moment, having sought shelter of a kind in a scene towards the end of the movie, a moment when Lara, the officially designated Final Girl of _Camp Bloodbath VIII: Back to Camp_ , came stumbling and screaming and streaked with gore out of the woods and was almost knocked over by the Sheriff’s police car. They were far enough away to watch events unfurl in an endless 93 minute loop without being observed.

It gave them a moment to catch their breath, to sit and sleep and recuperate. Max was sitting beside Vicki on a picnic bench, facing away from the road and out into the woods. Duncan was sitting on the opposite side of the bench, his head pillowed on his folded arms.

Max’s nerves were shredded: she knew Billy didn’t appear in this scene, and it had run enough times for her to know that they were safe here, and still she kept watching the trees, searching for any sign of movement. And wondering as she did so whether their lives were playing out on a screen somewhere.

What a crappy movie that’d be.

"Maybe this is it," Duncan said, his voice muffled.

Max exchanged a look with Vicki, glanced around at him. "What do you mean?"

"I mean maybe this is it," he said, lifting his head. "Not zombies or a nuclear winter, but this. The end of the world."

She closed her eyes and leaned into Vicki, who wrapped her arm around her back. "Shut up."

He didn’t seem to have heard her. "Maybe this is all there is. We’ve passed the singularity. And this is like the Matrix. Our bodies have been turned into soylent green to feed the sentient super computers and we’re all that’s left of humanity."

"It’s not the Matrix and we’re not soylent green." She said it wearily, too tired to argue. In any case, he’d just watched his step-sister die horribly not too long ago, so she figured she’d better cut him some slack. "We’re going to find our way out of here."

"Will we, Max? Really?"

"You’re not helping, Duncan," Vicki said, and she didn’t sound like she was too tired to argue.

"We’re almost there," Max said. "This is movie number eight. After this there’s three left, and then we’re done. We Keep on Keeping on and we’ll make it out."

A silence followed. She opened her eyes and looked around.

Duncan had blanched, and he was staring down at his hands. Max groaned inwardly. Something Gertie said. Used to say. _Would_ say again once she came back in the next movie, a little more broken, a little more battered. None of them had escaped that. Even when they didn’t die, they still got the crap beaten out of them. Max was a mass of aches and bruises these days, not to mention the scar from where Billy Murphy’s crazed half-sister had disembowelled her with a pair of garden shears. That hadn’t been fun.

"Sorry."

"It’s okay." His lips twitched. "She’s… y’know, she’ll come back. And she’ll be fine."

Well, she’d be alive. None of them talked much about their deaths, but Max had experienced it for herself now – two deaths over the course of the franchise – and she’d seen how the world bled away to reveal the darkness beyond. The wound might have healed, but the scar still pinched at her whenever she moved. That time around Vicki had been the Final Girl, with Duncan as a sort of honorary girl.

Being a virgin didn’t seem to count for shit these days, which was just as well since Max wasn’t a virgin any more. Hasn’t been since two movies ago.

She’d been running through the woods in a thunderstorm with Vicki and Casey, the Final Girl from _Camp Bloodbath VI: The Reckoning_ , her hair plastered to her face, the rain coming down so heavy she could hardly see the trees, let alone what might be lurking in between. Then Vicki had slipped in the mud, and her hand had been yanked from Max’s grasp. Max turned, saw Vicki struggling to her feet, and in a sudden convenient flash of lightning her stomach dropped, because he was there, of course he was, and she could see by the look of resignation on Vicki’s face that she knew it too. Such were the rules.

"Shit," Vicki had said.

Max didn’t scream. She hadn’t in a while. If anyone was watching this, getting some messed up kick out of watching Max watching her friends die over and over again, no way in hell was she going to give them that satisfaction.

Casey was making up for it though, hauling on her arm, screaming at her to run.

Max met Vicki’s gaze. "See you on the other side," she said, and Vicki nodded grimly.

"Hey, Max?" she said, not looking scared, but furious. "Kick his ass."

Billy rose up behind her and cut her throat.

Then the mask tilted up, looking like something out of a Greek Chorus, and eyes glinted within the dark hollows of the carved wooden eye sockets. The rain ran down the heavy wooden brows, and down the blade, where it mingled with Vicki’s blood, diluting it and beading in glistening rubies on the point of the knife, dripping onto the mud.

Max turned and ran, following Casey.

And of course there was a ramshackle house in the woods, because _the rules_ , and of course it was a shithole inside, reeking of damp and decay, with peeling wallpaper and a steep rickety wooden staircase that led up to a landing deep in shadow.

"Hello?" Casey called out. "Is anyone here? Please, we need to use your phone. We need help."

They peered through the nearest doorway, into a filthy room with debris littered on the floor, and the broken window half boarded up. The rain dripped down the shards of glass left in the window frame, pooling on the carpet beneath the window. Lightning flashed at familiar intervals, a peel of thunder exactly three seconds later. Identical, every time.

But there was a phone, an ancient looking thing with a rotary dial, that looked like it hadn’t worked in decades.

While Casey went towards it, Max followed the corridor into the kitchen. There was a layer of greasy dust on every surface and it reeked of decaying food, but it looked like it had been used recently. She jerked open drawers until she found a kitchen knife, which was blunt but better than nothing, and then she heard Casey in the corridor saying that the phone was dead. Which, again: _of course._

Max opened her mouth to call back.

A hand clamped over it. An arm snaked around her chest, and she fought, struggling, her cries muffled as she was dragged back into the darkness of the larder. The door closed with the faint click of the latch easing into place. Hot breath burned against her ear. She flipped the kitchen knife around to drive it back, but a hand caught around her wrist, a low urgent voice hissing at her ear, "It’s me, Max, it’s me."

 _Chris_.

"Listen to me," he told her, "Do exactly as I say. Don’t make a sound, don’t say a word and we’ll be fine, okay? No matter what you hear. We’re safe here, got it?"

She nodded and he dropped his hand from her mouth. "I thought you were dead."

"Yeah, I get that a lot," he said and she gave a broken little coughing laugh. "The others?"

She shook her head. He wrapped his arms around her and murmured, "I’m sorry," into her hair.

Casey was still moving around and making too much noise. As she came through into the kitchen, Chris moved his mouth to Max’s ear, his voice barely above a breath. "Remember what I said. No sound." His arms had tightened around her chest as if he didn’t quite trust her to listen.

Her mouth dry, Max nodded. The air rasped in and out of her mouth, but Chris seemed to have stopped breathing at all, and in the close reeking confines of the larder, her breath seemed too loud.

"Hello?" Casey’s voice had gone quiet, but she was still making too much noise. The doorknob of the door to the larder began to turn, inching around. Max’s breath stopped. She felt the urge to grab the handle, to hold it closed. To stop Casey from finding them, because if she did she wouldn’t be the only one.

There was a crash. Music screeched in a sudden crescendo, and Max flinched, unable to stop herself from crying out in startled shock. Chris’s hand clamped over her mouth again, muffling the sound. Something heavy slammed into the door, and outside Casey screamed. Max turned towards Chris, pressing her face into his chest until the screams were cut abruptly short.

Outside the larder something crumpled to the floor with a muffled thump.

In the silence that followed, Max heard raspy breathing: Billy on the other side of the door.

Shit, had he heard her?

Chris pressed his hand against the back of her head. Maybe he meant it as a reassuring gesture, but she could feel the rapid beat of his heart. He was scared too, for all his assurances. He didn’t really know they were safe, not for certain. And how could they be safe with nothing but a flimsy wooden door between them and Billy? She knew the psychotic bastard could hear their breathing, the beat of their hearts. He knew they were there. He had to.

And then she heard the scuff of boots on the floor. The sound of something heavy being dragged from the kitchen.

They waited for what seemed like an interminable length of time, for the larder door to crash open, for Billy to come bursting in, but the music had faded away to nothing. Max counted the seconds, until they passed the point where the jump scare should have happened, and it didn’t come. Nothing happened.

Chris exhaled, the tension easing from his body. "We’re safe now."

"Are you sure?"

He was right. She could feel it in the stillness of the air, the sense of the world suspended. Whatever had happened here, it was finished for the moment, although the movie would loop back around eventually and Casey would be back. Max couldn’t tell whether she found it a comfort or horrifying: that Casey would never quite die completely, or that she kept coming back only to be brutally murdered over and over again.

"Let’s go upstairs. They never go up there. As long as we’re quiet, we’re safe." He opened the larder, and eased out. The blood trail on the floor seemed to be sinking into the lino, vanishing out of sight, although it was still there, just hidden; the murder had sunk into the walls, clinging along with the grease and nicotine. She followed him, her hand in his, shivering in her wet clothes.

"How many times have you been through this?" she asked, and his shoulders tensed.

"Three or four." He looked back at her as they went up the stairs. "I was going to come find you, Max. I was trying to figure out a way of following Billy to the next scene without him seeing me and finishing the job, I swear."

"I know."

He shot her a look, not smiling, but relieved.

The bedroom was as filthy as the rest of the house, but at least a little drier, the only furniture a rickety metal-framed bed, the covers rumpled back to reveal mildew-spotted sheets. She sagged as she stared at it. "I am so sick of this."

Chris brushed her hair back from her face. "You’re freezing."

"You’re just trying to get me out of my wet clothes. That always ends well in a horror movie."

"If I don’t, you’ll catch your death," he said, and there was a moment’s suspended pause as they considered what he’d just said. Max’s choked-up laugh tore its way free of her like a sob, and then she was half-laughing, half-crying, and thinking of Vicki and of how at least she hadn’t died scared but _pissed._ She sank down on the bed, and he sat next to her, pulling her close, and then they were kissing, clinging to each other in search of comfort, some proof that they were each safe and still alive. His hands rose to cup her cheeks, the kiss clumsy and desperate, and she fell back against the bed with his weight on top of her.

He pulled away, breathing hard. "Wait. Max, wait. We can’t."

 _Yeah_ , she thought, _screw that._ Because whatever it was they had been doing before, it clearly wasn’t working. They were still stuck in hell. Being a virgin hadn’t stopped her dying, so really, what was the damn point?

She moved to straddle him, his eyes half-closed as he tilted his head up to kiss her. She peeled off her sodden t-shirt, and then he was kissing the swell of her breasts, the hollows of her throat as she fumbled at his belt to free him.

She didn’t give him time to argue, because they were alive, and they were safe for the moment, and she’d just seen her oldest friend murdered in front of her. And then it was too late anyway, because he was inside her and that meant she technically wasn’t a virgin any more, so there didn't seem much point looking back.

It was fast and frantic, and pretty much exactly what she’d expected her first time to be like: awkward and uncoordinated and kind of a disappointment. But then again, no murdering psychopath turned up to butcher them both, so it could have been much worse.

Afterwards they stared up at the water stains on the ceiling, and listened to the silence and tried not to think what a terrible idea that had just been.

She wasn’t a virgin any more. She was fair game.

"How long have we got?" she asked.

"Uh… About forty minutes I think. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you."

She rolled onto her side and he draped his arm over her shoulder, pulling the blanket over both of them and pressing his body up against hers for warmth. The rain drummed against the window, the thunder and lightning regular as the chimes of a clock. "How long do you think it’s been?"

"You mean since Casey…?"

She shook her head. "Since we got trapped here."

"What is this, Camp Bloodbath V?"

"VI."

"Right. All these crappy movies blur together after a while. Uh, maybe a day per movie, so it’s got to be almost a week at least."

It was longer than that, she was almost certain. "Hey, you remember that tutoring session? The myth of Persephone? That feels like it was months ago."

He went still against her back, his breath warming her neck. "Right." He sounded numb.

"I keep thinking about it. Like we’re trapped in the underworld, and we just need to keep on going and eventually we’ll escape."

"Persephone never escaped completely. She spent every winter in the underworld with Hades. And maybe..." He broke off, went silent.

"Maybe what?" she asked and when he didn’t answer, she rolled towards him. "Maybe _what,_ Chris?"

"It doesn’t matter."

"Will you just tell me?"

"I was thinking about Prometheus."

"The guy who stole fire from the gods of Olympus?" A chill sensation crept over her skin, because she thought she knew what he was thinking about. "He was the one they chained to a rock, right? And sent eagles to peck out his liver, and every day his liver would grow back and it’d start all over again the next day?"

"Sounds familiar, right?"

"It sounds horrible."

"But, hey, on the plus side, I don’t think you’ll be failing Classics any more if we ever get back to the real world." He sighed, curling into her. "I miss the real world. And I miss my dads. And my dog. But for what it’s worth, I’m glad I’m here. I wouldn’t have wanted you to go through this with no one but Duncan, Gertie and Vicki for company."

But if he wasn’t here, Vicki wouldn’t have been either. She’d died – _again_ – and it was Max’s fault. "I miss my mom," she said quietly, but that ache was a little less sharp now, a little more diffuse. Easier to deal with. Mainly she kept thinking about Vicki, that moment when Billy rose up like a shadow behind her and cut her throat. If Chris hadn’t come, Vicki wouldn’t have come either, and the only reason he came was for Max. "You think…"

"What?" He kissed the nape of her neck softly, and she shivered.

"I mean, we are still alive, right? You don’t think we’re… In the theatre, when I cut through the screen… What if I didn’t manage to save us? What if that was the wrong thing to do? What if we–"

"Hey." His arm tightened around her, drawing her close. "You can’t think like that. Just keep going, Max. Keep going forwards and whatever you do, don’t look back."

"That’s Orpheus," she said.

"See? I’m an awesome Classics tutor."

"Damn straight."

He sighed. "We could really do with a _deus ex machina_ right about now."

They fell silent for a long while and in the quiet Max must have drifted off. Before she knew it, Chris was waking her gently, pressing his finger to his lips. She nodded, swallowing, sensed how the atmosphere in the house had shifted. They listened to the faint low thrum of building music, to the sound of the door opening and the movement downstairs, until, right on cue, the screams began.

 

* * *

 

At the sound of distant screaming, Max woke with a start. Vicki tightened her arm around Max’s shoulders in a gesture of reassurance. She leaned against Vicki, watched through the trees as Lara came shrieking out of the woods and into the path of the oncoming police car, barely avoiding being thrown over the hood. She got into the back, the car drove away, and the cycle began anew.

Duncan slept right through it.

"So," Vicki said, once the car was out of sight and silence had settled once more, her voice bright and brittle, "you slept with Chris."

Max wriggled up, cheeks heating. "What? No, I didn’t."

"Please. I’m not totally stupid. Also you talk in your sleep. And you know, whatever. It’s fine. It’s not like being a virgin matters in horror movies these days, right? Thank you, Wes Craven." She paused. "When did you get the time to..."

" _Camp Bloodbath VI_. After the woods."

"Oh." Vicki frowned, her hand rising to her throat where she still bore the scar. " _Oh_. Shit, like seriously? Right after I died? You bitch."

"Sorry. It just kind of happened."

"No, no, whatever, it’s fine. Whatever gets you in the mood. Apparently for you what gets you in the mood is watching me get butchered."

"If it makes you feel any better, I died in _VII_ and you survived that one."

Vicki considered that. "You know what, that actually does make me feel better. Let’s just hope we don’t reach _Camp Bloodbath XI_ and cycle right back to the first movie again, because now you’re not a virgin we really _will_ be screwed." Vicki’s eyes widened. "Oh shit, have they done a reboot?"

Max groaned. "Oh God, I hope not."

"If we wait here long enough," Vicki said grimly, "maybe they will."

"We need to kill that son-of-a-bitch quickly," Max agreed. "Again."

"As soon as the car comes round again. Which should be in… eighty minutes or so."

They watched the woods for a while, listening to the staticky silence, waiting for the music to start. When Vicki spoke again, her voice was quieter.

"I had an idea," she said. "Maybe if we did cycle back to the first movie, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing. I was thinking about the flashback, the one your mom triggered... What if that was it? Our chance to break the cycle and escape?"

"The flashback?"

"Yeah. Think about it. That was the moment Billy turned into a psycho, right? What if we’d stopped those counsellors from dropping the cherry bombs into the outhouse? Billy never gets burned, he never goes full psycho, there’s no movie and no sequels. That could work right?"

Max considered this. "How would we stop them?"

"Please." Vicki gave her a look. "You’ve got a machete, I’ve got a chainsaw. We can stop them." Her lips tightened, and she looked away, eyes shining in the way that Max knew meant she was trying not to cry. "We could have stopped this, Max. Seven movies ago."

"Maybe we still could," Max said, a brief spark of hope flickering into life in her chest.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean the words, the ones that triggered the flashbacks, if we said them now..." But she trailed off, because Vicki was shaking her head.

"It won’t work. I’ve _tried_ it, Max. I already said the words, while you were sleeping. Nothing happened."

 _Damn it._ And the flame of hope was pinched out like a candle. "Different movie, different rules," Max said numbly.

"Screw this shitty movie. And screw its rules." Vicki’s hand tightened around her chainsaw. "I saw when that car comes around the bend, we kill the Sheriff, steal his car, take Lara hostage, and run Billy over a couple of times. Then we chainsaw the fucker to death."

Max shook her head. "If we ever get out of this, we’re going to be so messed up."

"Yeah, like we weren’t already."

Max laughed, her throat tight. Vicki had always been able to make her laugh, that black self-deprecating humour that somehow twisted outwards after they'd grown apart. Back when they were close as sisters, back when Max spent more time at Vicki's house than she did at her own, even if Max had spent most of that time envying Vicki her house and her comfortable lifestyle and her parents who didn’t have to work two jobs to make ends meet.

They’d been inseparable, the two of them, right up until the moment Max’s mother died and the weight of desolation seemed to crush the life right out of her. After the car crash, for a time all she could see were the empty spaces everywhere, the hollows that Amanda Cartwright used to fill, and then Vicki’s house and Vicki’s parents and Vicki’s lifestyle were nothing but reminders of everything she’d lost and of how little Max had gotten to see of her mother when she was alive.

She looked away, said quietly, "I’m sorry about Chris."

"It’s okay," Vicki said, but she’d gone still so Max knew that it wasn’t okay really.

"No, it’s not. It’s not okay. Would you have gone to the screening if he hadn’t been there?"

"Probably not."

"And he was only there because of me. It’s my fault you’re here. It’s my fault you got your throat cut, and all those other times you died, they’re my fault too. You and Gertie and Duncan and Chris, you all keep dying..."

Vicki gave a tight smile. "It does kinda suck. But some good came out of it, right? You had the chance to say good bye to your mom or whatever, and we..." She stopped, looking away, blinking a little too fast. "Well, we’re talking again."

Max took hold of her hand. "I missed you too, Vicki."

Vicki squeezed her fingers. "Anyway," she said, "you’re blaming the wrong person." Vicki nodded at Duncan. " _None_ of us would have gone to the movie if it hadn’t been for him." She slapped his shoulder, and he woke up, nearly rolled off the picnic bench until he caught himself.

"Is it Billy? Is Billy here?"

"Not yet," Max said. She stood up, hefted the machete. "But the scene’s going to start soon and we’ve got a Sheriff to kill. So you’d better get ready."

"Yeah, yeah, okay." He yawned, pinching at the sleep in the corners of his eyes. "Wait, _what_?"


End file.
